Considering The New Trail: Survivance, Music Education, and the Phoenix Indian School

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Wednesday 11:45 am - Gold 2
  In Roundtable Session: Troubling Histories and Complicating Identities

Abstract

How might music education historians listen for colonial habits of practice in their historical inquiry? Explorers and settlers have an established pattern of forcibly assimilating Indigenous peoples into Eurocentric ideals, including via the Indian Boarding School movement. Boarding school leader Captain R. H. Pratt infamously states, “Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.” Throughout this movement, which included 367 schools in 29 states, students were stripped of their cultural identity, often through music-making and so-called “creative” practices. This historical inquiry presents several artifacts, including the 1944 yearbook, The New Trail, which demonstrate the multiplicity of possible narratives that can be extracted from a seemingly benevolent artifact. The paper then offers a discussion of historiographical practices within music education.

Author

• Shawn T. Kimbrel, Arizona State University